


let me love you

by moodyme



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Lynch brothers mostly getting along, M/M, Past Joseph Kavinsky/Ronan Lynch, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:20:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28080813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moodyme/pseuds/moodyme
Summary: He makes a kind of game out of watching the people, and of watching his neighbour through the window. Sometimes, the neighbor watches back, and it doesn’t feel like a game at all anymore.
Relationships: Jordan/Declan Lynch, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 7
Kudos: 75





	let me love you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SilverOpals394](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverOpals394/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Take Me Home (To the Place I Belong)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27972425) by [SilverOpals394](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverOpals394/pseuds/SilverOpals394). 



> Wrote this because the lovely SilverOpals394 sparked my long dormant inspiration, thank you 💗

Ronan watched his mother glide from one side of the store to the other, touching flower petals daintily as she passed them. She was humming a song as she went. He thought it might have been _“Seven Drunken Nights”,_ an old favorite of Niall’s, but she kept changing the tune or forgetting her place, so he wasn’t sure.

He caught Declan’s eye as she passed in front of him, and his brother jerked his chin at him. Ronan hated himself just a bit for it, but after a few long moments he followed him out the door anyway.

He found Declan sitting on the curb, holding a cigarette to his mouth and he wondered when the fuck his prude of a brother started _that_. But then, Declan was also sitting on the curb in his neatly pressed suit, so maybe he was just having a bad day.

“You don’t have to do this,” Declan said around a release of smoke when Ronan threw himself down next to him. 

Ronan’s first reaction was a bark of laughter. It made Declan’s shoulders stiffen, just slightly. His second reaction was to snarl, “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Because they are both just that fucked up, the snarl made Declan’s shoulders loosen again.

“It means that if you had something to do, something you _wanted_ to do, we could hire someone to run this place.”

“This is what I want,” Ronan huffed.

“Really?” Declan said. He took a drag of his cigarette and Ronan thought about trying to bum one off of him, but decided he doesn’t need to add anything else to his list of bad habits. A list he was actively trying to shorten these days, not lengthen. “I thought you wanted to fade into your twilight years in the serenity of the Barns?”

Ronan pushed his shoulder against Declan’s perhaps a little harder than he should have, but that’s what his fucking brother gets for quoting what he had said when he was fucking _thirteen_ and trying to be _poetic_.

A bell chimed behind them and Declan rushed to push the last bit of his cigarette into the pavement, trying to hide what he was doing.

The two of them turned, in sync, to find Matty looking between them, his usually happy face contorted into something that almost made him look nervous.

“You aren’t fighting, right?” Matthew asked, quietly. Before either of them could respond, he added, louder, “Mom wants to move some of the heavy pots around, and I don’t wanna do it by myself.”

Matty turned, and let the door shut behind him, the bell tinkling again.

“Declan,” Ronan said to the ground. He didn’t want to look at Declan when he said this, didn’t think he could without going back to being sixteen and letting rage distort it into something nastier than he intended. “This is what I want, what I- I think I need this.”

_This_ , being _Fern & Magnolia_, which was being not-so-secretly bankrolled by all three Lynch brothers, each of them happy to give whatever money was needed from their inheritance if it made Aurora happy.

Several months ago, Declan had tried to argue that since Ronan would be the one to actually run the flower store, that he should contribute less, had even suggested that there was no need for Ronan to actually run the store at all. Since Matty was there, Ronan had told him to stop being a poop head. Matty had smiled at the look that spread over Declan’s face at the childish comment, and Declan had shut up about it, at least until now. 

Ronan thought, _hoped_ , that while he helped run the store that the change would do him good.

That being around _people_ and not just _cows_ would do him good.

Declan was quiet for a long time, but eventually he reached up and tousled the hair that Ronan was only just now letting grow back in, even if it was still short and not really quite touslable.

They’ve come a long way, Ronan thought, that Declan didn’t hesitate to do it. That Ronan _let_ him do it.

“Okay,” Declan finally said, pushing himself up with his hands on his knees.

Ronan sat by himself for just a moment, taking a slow and deep breath, before he followed his older brother again to help finish getting the store ready for its opening tomorrow.

  
  


* * *

  
  


After only one week of working at _Fern & Magnolia_, Ronan can categorize the customers into five types.

The first type are his most common, but also the ones he hates most. They’re the middle aged men in suits who walk in, everything about them guilty, purchase a dozen or two red roses, and walk out without a touch of guilt on them. Ronan hates cheaters.

The second type is similar to the first, but leaps and bounds better. They are the handful of regular customers who come in on Friday’s wearing suits (something Ronan learned his first weak in D.C was that everyone _was always in fucking suits_ ) and pick out a bouquet of their spouses or partners favorite flowers, because they actually _know_ their spouses or partners favorite flowers.

The third type are brides and grooms. Most of them aren’t too bad, but if they come in with their future mother-in-laws, well, when _they_ come with the brides or grooms, Ronan seriously thinks about shaving his head completely just to keep himself from trying to tear out the short hair he allows himself to have.

The fourth type is the most annoying. They come in, shy, dressed like they want to impress someone, look around, and choose something at random. Ronan just _knows_ they are on their way to a first date. He tells Matty about this fourth type, and he has the gall to look at him smugly and ask if he really finds them annoying or if he is just jealous.

The fifth type is the best though. They are the old folks and middle aged moms who come in to buy potted plants and swap plant care tips with him. Sometimes they tsk at him about the hydrangeas or the geraniums or the chrysanthemums. Sometimes they pinch his cheek or ask him embarrassing questions. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


After three of working at _Fern & Magnolia_, he is sitting at the counter, bored with watching stuffy almost-politicians streaming by, when a taxi pulls up at the curb and stops.

A man got out, walked to the back of the car, and pulled out a suitcase. 

Ronan is struck by the man, who was, despite being in D.C, not in a suit.

He watched the man pull his suitcase towards the stairs at the side of the building, watched as the man stopped suddenly and stared at the store. Ronan’s breath catches for some reason, and he worried that he’d been caught staring, but after a moment the man frowns, shakes his head, and disappears.

Ronan knows who he is, or, he thinks he knows who he is. Along this section of the street, the stores have apartments above them and _Fern & Magnolia _is no different. The man is his neighbor.

Groaning, Ronan buried his head in his arms. Fuck him, his neighbor is _pretty_.

A week after that, a week of observing the trickle of people that go upstairs to the apartment at all hours of the day, and Ronan wonders what the fuck he does for a living. He works from home, undoubtedly, but doing what Ronan couldn’t begin to guess. He wonders if the man isn’t a sex worker of some kind? Possibly?

It would kinda sorta explain why a gruff looking man arrives at 10 a.m, and leaves half an hour later. Why ten minutes after he was gone, an older woman in a sundress arrived and was also gone before an hour passed. Why at 2 p.m, a shiny black car circles the block once, twice, three times before it finally stopped and a couple with perfect clothes and perfect smiles got out, and why they leave leaning against each other, whispering furiously.

They are all too different for Ronan to pin any other reason why they are all visiting his neighbor, who himself has odd habits.

They are all gone too quickly for him to think the theory is at all plausible, so he keeps wondering.

He makes a kind of game out of watching the people, and of watching his neighbour through the window. Sometimes, the neighbor watches back, and it doesn’t feel like a game at all anymore.

* * *

  
  


Ronan, up to his neck with sorting the latest shipment of blossoms, absently hears the bell over the door chime. He can’t be bothered to greet whoever has wandered into the store just after opening on a Monday morning, because fuck Mondays and fuck being polite on Mondays. Monday could go suck a dick because Mondays blowed.

His point is proven when he sees Joseph Kavinsky slither through the ailes. He spends too long staring at a lily plant, fondled a budding hyacinth, and turned to Ronan.

“So,” K dragged the syllable out, let Ronan hear how scratched and gravelly his voice sounds. “Cows just don’t do it for you anymore?”

“Lots of things don’t do it for me anymore.”

Kavinsky shrugged, and smiled like it was a good joke but not good enough to laugh at. With a wink he said, “You keep telling yourself that, princess.” 

It was Ronan’s turn to shrug. “That’s what my therapist suggested I do.” That _did_ get a laugh out of K. Like a metal fork scraping against teeth.

Ronan rolled his eyes and headed back to the counter. He could go over inventory later, right now he just wanted something sturdier than a hyacinth between him and Kavinsky. Breaking bad habits, and all that.

Kavinsky followed and talked at him for another few minutes before he finally left. Ronan watched him leave, and sighed.

Fuck Mondays.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Because he’s Kavinsky, the first time isn’t the last time that he shows up uninvited.

Because he’s Kavinsky, he shows up even though Ronan keeps telling him not to.

Because he’s Kavinsky, he notices him noticing his neighbour.

“Not really your type, is he?” Kavinsky mused, the eighth or so time he had showed up uninvited.

“Fuck you,” Ronan grumbled, hopefully not loud enough that Mrs. MacPhearson could overhear him from where she was considering two identical pots of hen and chick succulents.

  
“You wish,” Kavinsky scoffed. “I always thought your type was more like Dicky-boy, or me, not-”

“Finish that sentence and I’ll-”

“Yadda, yadda, yadda,” Kavinsky said, moving his hand like a mouth, “Promises, promises. I talked to him once, in passing. I don’t see the appeal, that’s all I’m saying.”

_“You_ wouldn’t.”

  
  


* * *

The ninth time Kavinsky shows up, Declan is there. Because of course he is. It’s the second Monday of the month, and that’s always when Declan comes by to check the books, ostensibly, but really to check on Ronan.

_Fuck Mondays._

His brother doesn’t say anything, just levels an icy look at Kavinsky before he retreats to the office in the back, saying something under his breath too low for either him or Kavinsky to make out.

Kavinsky actually listened to Ronan when he tells him to leave, a small miracle that Ronan will have to credit to one of the Saints.

St. Dennis, maybe, since Kavinsky was certainly a headache. Or St. Oliver, maybe, since he always felt at peace once Kavinsky was gone.

After several deep inhaled and exhales, Ronan walked to the back and knocked on the open office door to get Declan’s attention. When he looked up from the paperwork, Ronan was struck by how much his brother looked like Niall. Not as much as Ronan himself, but more than Matty. The resemblance seemed to get stronger with age. With Declan choosing to no longer manage his curls with a bottle of hair gel. With Declan smiling more with each passing year. With each day his brother spent with Jordan.

“He gone?” Declan asked. 

“Yeah,” Ronan said, and refused to wince.

Declan twirled his pen around, clicked something on the keyboard twice, twirled his pen again. Ronan wanted to shout at him to just _say it already_. Instead, Declan raised an eyebrow at him, like he had been waiting for Ronan to say something.

“There’s nothing there,” Ronan said, and knew that both of them could hear the _anymore_ that he didn’t say. 

Declan stared at him. The silence grated at Ronan, even though he tried to not let it, even though he tried not to let it in regards to Declan. Maybe it wouldn’t have, if he hadn’t just been in the presence of Kavinsky.

“I figured,” Declan said, cutting him off before he could be the one to break the silence. “You’ve been, ah, _mooning_ over Parrish.”

“Mooning is showing your ass to somebody,” Was Ronan’s immediate response. While Declan was still frowning at that, he asked, “And who the fuck is Parrish?”

Declan’s frown shifted to a smug smile, and his eyes flicked up to the ceiling. 

“Parrish?” Ronan said, pointing to the ceiling, to the apartment above them.

“Parrish,” Declan nodded. He settled into the office chair, folded his arms, and let the smugness in his smile increase tenfold. “ _Adam_ Parrish. A few months older than you. Moved in a while before mom got this place. You want me to keep going?”

Ronan glanced back at the quiet store, at a little bundle of daffodils someone had ordered, and right, _new beginnings_.

“Yes.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Ronan, a few weeks later, was still of the opinion that Monday’s can get fucked when his neighbor, when _Adam Parrish_ , storms into _Fern & Magnolia_ and accuses him of trying to murder him.

But, when midnight rolls around and Monday ticks over to Tuesday, Ronan thinks that, maybe, Monday’s aren’t that bad after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Fern can represent magic and the bonds of love, while magnolia can mean love for nature, hence the name of the shop 👍


End file.
